Harri Hursti drove up to Los Angeles last Friday after his appearance that morning before the Riverside County, California, "Blue Ribbon" panel convened to investigate massive problems during the County's 2006 election, and continuing concerns from Election Integrity advocates about both the performance and security issues surrounding the Sequoia Edge II DRE touch-screen voting systems in use down there.

We sat down to interview Hursti for a documentary film for an hour or two on Friday night, and we continued chatting into the wee hours. After getting home around 4am, we suspect we'll be playing catching up for a few days.

The headline from those discussions last night is probably that Hursti, now famous for his hack of a paper-based Diebold optical-scan voting system in Leon County, Florida, in late 2005 (as seen live in HBO's documentary Hacking Democracy), advocates digital optically-scanned paper ballots --- where the image of the scan can then be made available to all on the Internet --- as the most secure and most transparent method of voting for the type of elections we have in these United States.

That may come as a surprise to advocates of Rep. Rush Holt's Election Reform bill, who have been pointing to the "Hursti Hack" as a way to suggest that op-scan tabulation is "just as bad" as Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting systems. Holt's bill (HR811) would allow for the continued use of DREs, despite the continuing warnings from computer scientists, disabilities and minority rights advocates, and the Election Integrity community that the devices should be banned.

Hursti heartily disagrees with those Holt supporters and told us again that DREs are not safe for use in elections, with or without a so-called "voter verified paper audit trail." He's asked for us to help facilitate a meeting for him with Holt and his staff to discuss the matter, and we are attempting to do just that.

As well, Hursti's position may also come as a surprise to those who have pointed to the "Hursti Hack" in their call for 100% hand-counted paper ballots (HCPB) in American elections. While Hursti said he recognizes that such a system works well enough in other countries where ballots are much simpler, he feels the thousands of ballot styles and pages and pages of candidates and propositions would likely make all HCPB unwieldy here. By contrast, he explained that in Finland, voters go to the poll and cast a single vote for President as the only race on the ballot, which is simple enough to hand count on the night of the election.

He rattled off the many different systems of democracy in many different countries, from Europe to Asia, as well as a history of how America has come to its current mess, going back as early as the late 1800's to discuss the evolution of our modern day system in this country. Clearly, he's done his homework and is well worth listening to on these matters.

Hursti also gave high marks to California's new Secretary of State Debra Bowen for her recent announcement of "red team" hack testing for all of the state's currently certified electronic voting systems, as part of her "top to bottom review" of those systems. Other computer scientists and security experts have lined up to join in praising Bowen for this unique, first-of-its-kind attempt to finally test the security of these systems.

On the other hand, many of the state's elections officials have come out against such testing of their precious, hackable, un-transparent voting systems. And, surprise surprise, so has the Santa Cruz Sentinel --- the paper once owned by thankfully-former CA SoS Bruce McPherson --- in a laughable editorial late last week claiming that "paper ballots carry an even greater risk" than electronic voting systems, and that Bowen's planned test criteria is a "solution in search of a problem."

We're not sure what cave the Santa Cruz Sentinel has been living in, but we're guessing they've been sharing their hard tack and canned spam with their buddy, the gone-but-apparently-not-forgotten McPherson, the one responsible for certifying these god-awful systems in the first place for the state, despite mountains of evidence suggesting it was unwise. We're also guessing they've never sat down to chat with Harri Hursti.

Hursti's visit to Riverside, as we reported here last week, was in response to County Supervisor Jeff Stone's challenge last December that nobody could manipulate the county's Sequoia election system. After Hursti volunteered to take Stone up on that "1000 to 1" challenge, the county has been waffling ever since. So quite a few members of both the public and the press were on hand yesterday for Hursti's testimony before the "Blue Ribbon" panel.

Although Hursti traveled all the way from Finland, Stone and every other member of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors were apparently too busy to make it up the road to meet Hursti and listen to his presentation...

Tom Courbat, of Riverside's SAVE-R-VOTE coalition, had emailed invitation notices to all of the Riverside County Supes, but none showed up. He had even called Stone's office personally to make sure he was informed of the appearance, but was told that Stone was "booked solid all day long" and so likely would be unable to make it. He didn't.

Hursti told me there were about ten members from the media there, including a local ABC camera crew. Not bad. The Desert-Sun reported "More than 50 people turned out for the hearing in Palm Desert, the best attended of" the three open hearings held by the panel.

Courbat was ecstatic yesterday after the event, when he said via email that the commission seemed very impressed with Hursti. "Harri totally blew them away," he wrote, adding that he felt the panel fell in love with Hursti. "We may see some pretty significant change recommendations from the 'Blue Ribbon' committee to the Board of Supervisors."

Given our personal impressions after hangin' with Harri last night, we can appreciate Courbat's optimism and conclusion. Hursti is an immediately likable guy with an enormous amount of charisma, energy, and smarts. Not to mention a hearty sense of humor.

Courbat tells us he's working on getting his video-tape of Hursti's presentation online (though there seem to be some technical probs to work through). The presentation in Riverside, with Q&A, went a full hour or so, though only a half hour was originally expected.

Here are links to just some of the better media coverage on Saturday, regarding Hursti's appearance...

Chris Bagley in the North County Times: "Ninety-five percent of frauds are inside jobs...It's the enemy inside." Bagley quotes Hursti as telling the panel. He also points to some unspecified "Los Angeles-based blogger" who apparently helped arrange the Hursti appearance. Hmmm...

Nicole C. Brambila in The Desert Sun: Her article is headlined "Hacker gives voters something to worry about: Finnish scientist testifies how easy it is to hack system."

Both the Desert Sun and the NC Times articles quoted a snippet from the testimony of Riverside Registrar of Voters Barbara Dunmore, who has been showing up --- and if the quote and other reports are any indication, making something of a fool of herself --- at all three of the "Blue Ribbon" panel's public hearings in order to defend herself and her use of the Sequoia voting system.

She's quoted in both papers as saying, "I think it speaks volumes to our current system that Save R Vote had to get the best and brightest from another country in order to attempt to hack into our machine."

I'd counter that it "speaks volumes" to the national security threat posed by using such systems in the first place --- as has been previously warned by many scientists and repeated again last night by Hursti --- that "the best and brightest" from other countries recognize how vulnerable our systems are to tampering. Unlike the apparently clueless Dunmore and Stone, folks from overseas understand the threats and the vulnerabilities inherent in our current system.

On Dunmore's comments, Courbat told us, "We're not sure what point she was trying to make, but would she have preferred we brought in a high school student to state how easy it is to hack into the system?"

As Hursti said many times, he "thinks like a black hat," referring to the slang computer security experts use to refer to "bad guys" who might want to disrupt such a supposedly "secure" computer system. Although it apparently hasn't occurred to either Dunmore or Stone, Hursti tells a story which underscores the thinking of many Elections Officials who don't seem to understand that there are, quite literally, trillions of reasons to be concerned about other, not-so-friendly, "black hats" out there.

Late in our discussions last night, Hursti told the story of a conversation he'd had with an election official not long ago in "a swing state" (he refused to reveal the specific name and location of the official, despite unrelenting prodding). The election official, Hursti said, just couldn't understand what the all the fuss was about concerning the security of these election systems. As the official told an astonished Hursti, "We're not counting real things here like money."

In related news... George W. Bush repeated his promise on Saturday to veto a $124 billion emergency spending bill for the Iraq War because it sets benchmarks for a U.S. withdraw by late 2008, and more than 2000 Americans have been killed in Iraq since the 2004 Presidential Election, according to the Dept. of Defense.

This is becoming a watershed moment - a tipping point - even the most dense will have to see that there is a better way - and you have shown that there are those out there with the conmmon sense and lack of vested interest to show it to this country.

Thank you Brad and Harri - and many, many others who have worked tirelessly on this issue.

I have the utmost respect for both Brad and Harri and the really great work they've done. But is my beat-up old head slipping?

"advocates digital optically-scanned paper ballots --- where the image of the scan can then be made available to all on the Internet --- as the most secure and most transparent method of voting for the type of elections we have in these United States."

What did he mean? On the face of it this doesn't make sense. How can data on the Internet be secure? Maybe, if protected by cryptographic security? But that is the very opposite of transparency. Only people like Rivest of MIT can validate such systems; and though I'd could perhaps trust him I can't think of many others. And of course I shouldn't have to trust anybody. These cryptographic systems are the very opposite of transparent.

Not to mention that there are government agencies with galactic-level computing power which could fox the cryptography.

One other point: "he feels the thousands of ballots styles and pages and pages of candidates and propositions would likely make all HCPB unwieldy here."

A valuable point. But anyone seriously advocating HCPB has to have faced this. To change means a massive overhaul of legislation and finding the guts and resources to battle election officials, bought-off politicians, makers in any number of states - not to mention in counties nationwide...

abacus, I'm with you there. NO ELECTRONICS can be trusted for elections or voting equipment. It's just too easy to have the election completely cracked/hacked (However you friggin define it!) from the beginning.

I just about had it with all these people.

If it's so damned secure then why not compare ALL paper votes once against all machines once?

Instead everyone seems to want to microwave their food. Boy your sure going to get good HEALTH that way eh?

However, a 3% audit misses many frauds, according to the statistical audit reports on the Holt bill, which has audits of 3% to 10%. Check those reports out to be sure, but that's what I recall.

Because of the prior discussion of this random HCPB audit of one race per polling location, the omission of the hand counts from the description of Hursti's proposal above is unfortunate. Hand counts are an important part of the proposed system. The article states merely that:

{Hursti advocates} digital optically-scanned paper ballots --- where the image of the scan can then be made available to all on the Internet --- as the most secure and most transparent method of voting for the type of elections we have in these United States.

This however, does not even remotely come close to calling out even a sketch of an overall voting system that can be evaluated for whether or not we should be excited about it. Hursti himself has provided more detail, but that needs to be in the article. I understand that a proposal may be forthcoming, but the bandwagon is already fired up and the music is playing, and that should be put on hold until the facts are in.

If the ballot images are to be of any use to citizens at all, they are by far most likely to be hand counted, like the other audits in precinct are. So basically if the citizens do a good job on the ballot images, they will eventually hand count 100% of the ballots as a check against the secret opscan counts.

But now enters the legal system. The government has already published the "correct" results on election night, an unofficial citizens group points to a freaking mountain of ballot images and claims otherwise. They are, of course, routinely ignored.

We are getting no where. Getting the information is only the first step. We already have audits from San Diego county that are clearly improper. Nothing is done.

Hopefully the proposal will include rock solid legal steps so that ballot images can pass the "so what" test, and not just amount to a huge document dump that nobody really has the resources to count or check. i.e., so what if the ballot images SEEM to be way off? WHOSE ARMY OR ARMY OF LAWYERS OR WHAT PROCESS WILL FORCE A CHANGE?

After all, the mantra is that we can't do HCPB county wide because it's too hard to hire or recruit volunteers. But if we just publish the ballot images on the internet in a huge document dump, we will have achieved "transparency" via opaque document dumps. Huh?

if the ballot images are actually going to be checked by citizens WHY NOT LET THEM CHECK THEM BEFORE THE FIRST COUNTS ARE CERTIFIED AND BEFORE THE POLITICIAN IS SWORN IN?

Has anybody learned anything from CA50 yet? Getting the information is a first step, but only a tiny first step to CHANGING government action.

This can be the start of a public vetting process for this proposal, but we will need in put from stats experts, lawyers, and election bureaucracy experts (which some activists have become)

What did he mean? On the face of it this doesn't make sense. How can data on the Internet be secure? Maybe, if protected by cryptographic security? But that is the very opposite of transparency. Only people like Rivest of MIT can validate such systems; and though I'd could perhaps trust him I can't think of many others. And of course I shouldn't have to trust anybody. These cryptographic systems are the very opposite of transparent.

It seems you may have misunderstood his suggestion. I'll take the blame if it wasn't explained clearly in the story.

The posting of the ballot images on the Internet is only for transparency sake. In other words, the ballots are still tabulated locally, in this case, at the precinct by the digital image op-scan. The results from that tabulation would then be posted immediately, on paper at the precinct, before the ballots are then taken back to the county headquarters.

There would still need to be appropriate audits in place to check the accuracy of those precinct based op-scan counts. (And a suggestion has come up concerning the full hand-count of a single, randomly selected race at each precinct before the ballots go back to headquarters, in coordination with this tabulation method. I'm trying to look into that more to learn if it would offer any type of scientific certainty of the accuracy of results, but it would seem, on the surface anyway, to be a potentially good check against cheating)

Finally then, the ballot images --- which were scanned at the precinct --- would be posted online for the public to inspect on the Internet. They could count them themselves as they wish, and they could be compared to the actual paper ballots at any time.

It's actually an extremely transparent scheme, since no public records requests or access would be required to check the official count against those posted ballot images. In theory, anyway.

As well, Hursti explained to me how the digital image op-scan system is superior in a security way to the optical mark recognition type of op-scan. Easier to try and secure, in any case, for a number of reasons.

Though I understood, and concurred with his explanation for this (as a programmer myself), it'd require far too much geek-speak to get into the details about right now. I'll try to cover it in the not-too-distant future, however.

Hope that clears up your questions for the moment, in any case, Abacus.

This article omits the hand counted paper ballot random audits of one race per polling place that Hursti called for. ... the omission of the hand counts from the description of Hursti's proposal above is unfortunate. Hand counts are an important part of the proposed system.

Nothing was "omitted" from the article in that regard, because, as I mentioned in email to you, Paul, it didn't come up during my many hours of conversation with Hursti. I don't question your assertion that Hursti is in support of such a counting scheme, but since he didn't tell me about it, I couldn't report it.

I did, however, allude to it in my comment above, since you (and Tom Courbat) have mentioned it to me via email since my meeting with Hursti. But just to be clear, Hursti didn't "call for" that during our discussions, so it wasn't "omitted" in the article. It wasn't there to report on in the first place.

Hope that clears up the impression that might have gleaned by some after reading your comment that I was trying to "omit" some part of Hursti's suggestion. For the record, the idea of counting one random race at each precinct sounds great to me (so does counting *all* of the races at each precinct!), but that's not what this article was about, nor was it something I could report on, since Hursti didn't mention it.

As far as getting Holt and Hursti together, Holt as a rocket scientist should know that when you are trying to solve a problem you employ the top expert no matter where they are from. So Congressman Holt, if you really do want to solve our election problems, PLEASE take advantage of this opportunity to talk with Hursti!
The is no time left for monetary-driven half measures for our elections, TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE ALREADY DEAD!

Thank you Brad and everyone known and unknown who have taken action to secure verifiable elections!

Although Hursti traveled all the way from Finland, Stone and every other member of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors were apparently too busy to make it up the road to meet Hursti and listen to his presentation...

Good articles DREDD! I was talking to a friend of mine over the weekend who works at a microbiology lab that produces industrial use microbes. She told me they just had a breakthrough with 3 symbotic bacteria that can create pure ethanol! I sure hope this gets public before some energy manipulating company can buy it up to continue manipulating oil prices, just like the energy amplifying system (they classified it as a cold fusion system for lack of being able to explain it) the retired dow chemist's system seems to have gone.

Thanks for recognizing that you had notice via Tom Courbat's email of the hand counting element of Hursti's proposal. Tom, at least as of 11-18-06 was writing in favor of 100% HCPB. I'm the first to admit however that I don't find 100% HCPB to be sufficiently descriptive of a voting system proposal to judge it, since you could could 100% HCPB in secret and that would be unacceptable. For the record, I am a "civil rights" or "voting rights" or "democracy rights" advocate, and believe that we have to test each of our rights and principles against every voting system to see if they measure up, of course after we have the facts on said system.

Brad, you of course know that in the last 24-36 hours we went round and round on the CA50 list in part directly on the issue of you describing Hursti as offering an "opscan" proposal and failing to mention the critical HAND count check, when in fact if Tom Courbat's CA50 post reply to you was correct (and he is in the best position to know Hursti's position at this point having been his host at Riverside) then HCPB is not only a major element of the idea, the system if it operated at an ideal level would or rather potentially could result in 100% HCPB via publishing ballot images, though late in the game in the sense of being after the all-important first count, which remains a secret opscan count except for any random hand audits at the precinct level. Even if the opscan is open source, nobody has the slightest idea what the true count is on any race not subject to a hand audit, it's a faith based result.

ONE OF THE MANY LEGAL DEFINITIONS OF FRAUD: Judge C.J. Cardozo held in Ultramares Corp. v Touche, 225 N.Y. 170, 179 (1931): "Fraud includes the pretense of knowledge when knowledge there is none." To me, this would definitely include elections officials "certifying" as a "true count" an opscan secret count when in fact they don't have any personal knowledge that it is correct, and all the tests in the world don't tell us how the (rigged) computer performed on election day, the only day when any rigger cares to instruct it to do creative accounting.

(BUT QUERY: if we could harness that much volunteer power, either to count ballot images OR to audit "all" races on election night, why is it asserted by Brad and others that we can't get the volunteers to do this BEFORE the "winner" and "sore loser" are locked in? Is it only the difficulty of getting them to the polls to do HCPB work? But don't most go to the polls to VOTE? Can some of them hang around for a few hours more?)

In any case, whether or not this HCPB element was "omitted" (my original word choice) or not, it was my understanding in journalism that clear notice of an important fact to a journalist would lead to an obligation to follow up and confirm or deny that fact, or at least to point to a hole in the story showing the existence of other details not yet confirmed. But for confirmation, Tom Courbat seems to be a reliable source in the rest of the story, so if you couldn't reach Hursti no one would likely object if you had quoted Tom Courbat on the HCPB audit requirement.

The successful Riverside visit of Hursti is in marked contrast to bradblog's suggested approach on the published (and detailed) HR 811 Holt bill when released in its HR 811 version. At that time, bradblog was a strong voice for withholding all judgment until all the facts were in and especially insisting that we all READ THE BILL before denouncing it. Although I don't think a person already convinced that paper trail/audit "solutions" are wrong necessarily needs to read the bill at all, that was nevertheless an admirable commitment to objectivity and research.

Yet here regarding this non-Holt voting system proposal, in comment six you pronounce "for the record" that "counting one random race at each precinct sounds great to me... (so does counting *all* of the races at each precinct!)..." I note your avoidance or non-use at all times of the term "hand counting" and I also note that according to your quoted parenthetical just above, you also (in direct effect) pronounce for the record your support for 100% ("*all* of the races at each precinct") hand counted paper ballots as an election night "audit" prior to release of results.

I just wonder (1) why we don't have the same agnosticism here until we've all read and studied the proposal, as with Holt, and (2) I further wonder at your ability to pronounce yourself supportive of either 1 election night HCPB audit per polling place (which may be less than 3% overall audit with Holt offering a 3% to 10% audit) or alternatively even a 100% election night HCPB "audit" which is simply the same as HCPB you regard as politically unviable, and finally (3) I wonder where this bandwagon is going?

To find out, we'll have to get the facts, and study the proposal.

A shared Finnish ancestry make me as anxious as anyone to admire Harri Hursti (perhaps overly so, I wrote an admiring article about him for the Finnish American Reporter, which is not online but a reference to it can be found at http://www.pinecam.com/p...0089e57bb7d27fa8de7ba2af ). Nevertheless, Hursti is a computer and computer security expert only, not a statistics, human factors, American politics, bureaucracy, elections or legal expert. Nor is he, though he's well down the road to becoming so, an expert in electronic voting system design, transparency policy, or democratic requirements and values.

Yet the whole point of putting ballot images on the internet (allowing citizens to hand count from home) would be shot to hell on the legal level if they are not "ballots of record." And Brad says that they are not, they're just images that don't have that level of recognized reliability on the legal level. If a count of the ballot images can not prove anything legally, then dumping those images on the internet is hardly transparent.

But as presently described, this proposal features secret vote counting on the first count and the ballot images can not LEGALLY be used to impeach or overcome the official ballots if they are not "ballots of record" (we are all familiar with Holt language in this regard, thus know this is an issue). As such, it fails to provide the public's right to meaningful oversight - and thus fails the democracy test and the transparency test.

COMPARE: With 100% HCPB, it is said that some people don't or might not trust it (?) yet with 100% secret vote counts, NO RATIONAL PERSON has any basis for trust whatsoever, a much stronger case, and the opscans here still violate democratic rights, a rather serious matter.

COMPARE: With 100% HCPB it is said we can't get enough pollworkers, yet an implied selling point of ballot images is that people WILL count, although even if they do, right out of the gate and without even a fight and THROUGH OUR OWN PROPOSAL we will guarantee that the images are not ballots of record, making the ballot image dump a potentially deceptive selling point.

COMPARE: We can apparently get REAL excited about ballot images that don't count and keeping secret first counts, provided that its techno-oriented because people still fall for that even though it violates baseline democratic principles by keeping secret first counts, AND YET we can't even be bothered to perform or advocate one of the lamer bureaucratic opt outs of a BLUE RIBBON COMMISSION to study how we might get more pollworkers.

Perhaps, just as the right to trial by jury would fail without jury summonses, perhaps having representative citizens at the polls might require pollworking summonses, the right to vote "merely" being the right that protects all other rights.

If a summons could ever be justified, it is justified here, and that would remove Hursti's assumption that we can't get enough volunteers here.

My God, it sure seems worth a blue ribbon commission to me, before we all sign on to secret opscan counts and ballot image dumps that won't work in court. I totally reject the idea that given all the soldiers and activists who have died for democracy, that this generation we are in will not even work for it, a single night a year. We need to re-examine our assumptions here about the ability to get people to work for democracy one night every (say) 5 years or so, even given liberal excuses for lack of child care, etc.

I agree there are several unique separate steps which must be nailed down tight: ensuring individuals don't register and vote in various precincts (a la Coulter), validating voters at the polls, ballot presentation, candidate selection, recording the vote, casting the ballot, counting the ballot, posting results, ballot tracking and storage, audit trail(s), etc. It's gonna take a lot of work to get it right and to satisfy a lot of people after the junk we've gone through the last 8 or so years.

Just my two cents... I worked at the polls in November. I had to be there at 5:30 AM, since I was the only Democratic judge I had to drive to the precinct headquarters with the ballots at the end of the day. I got home after 9:00 PM at night. I was the youngest judge at my polling place(49). The people I worked the polls with were adament about not counting the votes by hand. They said it would be too much work on top of their long day. I talked with many people that day about the movie Hacking Democracy and other articles in the news about the trouble with Dres and Opscans. People are aware, they just don't know how we can affect change. I agree with Harry about not enough people willing to HANDCOUNT the ballots(at least that I could see). Since we were short a Democratic judge we asked people who came to vote if they were willing to be a judge for the day everyone we asked said no. I was so excited to be a judge and was running on an adrenaline rush, I would have been willing to handcount but I was exhausted by the time I got home. We had an OK turnout but not what I would have liked to see. How will we get people to volunteer to count when they won't even turn out to vote?

Brad, you of course know that in the last 24-36 hours we went round and round on the CA50 list in part directly on the issue of you describing Hursti as offering an "opscan" proposal and failing to mention the critical HAND count check, when in fact if Tom Courbat's CA50 post reply to you was correct (and he is in the best position to know Hursti's position at this point having been his host at Riverside)

It would be much appreciated if you stopped insinuating something nefarious here and/or otherwise ceased misleading folks about what I have and haven't said and what are and aren't the facts.

As I explained in email, Hursti never mentioned the hand count audit to me during our 6 or 7 hours of discussions on Friday night. Further, after you and Tom had mentioned that part of the counting scheme via email, I was able to speak to Tom (though not Hursti) who said that it was he that had asked Hursti about that additional element of counting one randomly selected race by hand at each precinct.

Whether that is sufficient enough to catch most of the fraud, I don't know. I'm trying to learn. Whether or not that was part of Hursti's own suggestions, or rather something that he agree would be a good idea, I can't tell you.

Hence: I can't and won't report what I don't know to be the facts. I can and will report what I DO know to be the facts, as I reported in the original story.

why is it asserted by Brad and others that we can't get the volunteers to do this BEFORE the "winner" and "sore loser" are locked in?

I have never made any such assertion, Paul, and it would really be appreciated if you would stop ascribing positions and/or statements and/or reportage and/or motivations to me for which there is no basis in fact. Thanks!

If you have opinions, and I know you have many many good ones, feel free to share them. But I don't particularly appreciate your speaking for either me, or for your assumptions about what you seem to presume to be my beliefs.

Tom Courbat seems to be a reliable source in the rest of the story, so if you couldn't reach Hursti no one would likely object if you had quoted Tom Courbat on the HCPB audit requirement.

As mentioned, Tom told me that it was he who had asked Hursti about that element. The article as written above, however, was about Hursti's point of view (not Tom's) and what he thought was the best method for tabulating votes. During my interview with Hursti, he made it quite clear that of the three general methods, DRE, op-scan or all HCPB, that his preference for the most secure and transparent was op-scan (digitally imaged).

If you or Tom would like to add additional suggestions to that, you are welcome. As far as presenting a complete scheme for a Hursti Plan in action, it's something I might like to do soon, but that was not what this article was about.

I hope that clarifies and we can get on with discussing something other than your unsupported implication that I am trying to hide something...or whatever the hell it is your implying.

Beyond that, as far as I know, Hursi has not written any report or recommendations for a complete plan of how to best tabulate American elections. So, for the moment, there is nothing to read (as you imply) before either stating an opinion, or --- in this case --- reporting on what the hell he did and/or didn't tell me about his opinions!

I agree with Harry about not enough people willing to HANDCOUNT the ballots(at least that I could see).

To be clear, Hursti didn't say that not enough people were willing or available to hand count ballots. At least to me.

That seems to have been a presumption that others have made here in comments surrounding Harri's point that the complicated American system of democracy, with many candidates and propositions, etc. on our ballots (going back, as he explained, to the early introduction of lever machines at the turn of the century to combat charges of paper ballot stuffing) did not lend itself to full, precinct-based hand-counting of ballots.

I can't recall if we got into the detailed specifics as to his opinions on why that was specifically.

Can we all agree to get the vote back on paper ballots and send the DREs to the scrapheap? Then we can discuss the best way to count them and how to get there from here. Before e-voting, Riverside County encouraged a number of cities and school districts to hold off-year (odd numbered) elections for local races so the ballots for general elections wouldn't be so long and result in "voter fatigue." County officials decided the DRE allowed them to re-consolidate elections,which contributed to the VVPATs running out of paper in the November '06 election. A return to off-year elections for local races would make it possible for some elections to be totally hand counted and perhaps eventually all elections. It begins by boldly embracing a giant step in the "write" direction - a return to paper ballots!

We have heard how easy it is to hand count paper ballots. And, that is true, in the countries that do it. Countries that hand count their elections usually have no more than one, or two contests on the ballot.

Here is more about what hand counted paper ballots look like in other countries, and how they do it:

Usually it is one contest. The ballot for the general elections in my state had bout 25 contests, with a few multi seat contests included. California and Washington state have even more contests at times, because of referendums etc.

Proponents of HCPB might device some sort of ballot that can be more easily counted by hand to eye, I wont go into that.

Maybe at the next peace march people could be signed up for vote counting or vote count coordinators. If they march I'm pretty sure they'd count, and you can bet the "other party" would mobilize they're troops to be there to counter balance those radicals counters!

Ancient, I think I argued in the past (Somewhere on this vast web) that "hand counter's" should be selected from the pool of registered voters. (Unless they have some horrid physical problem that stops them from it.) Just like JURY DUTY!

Otherwise they shouldn't be registered voters, since they do not believe in our country enough to be in service to it.

I would add to that, This would be the perfect argument to making election day a national day off work.

Another idea, it should be over several days time, however long it takes to get it done. e.g. Don't come to vote if you don't have X hours of free time.)

Alternatively the JURY DUTY method. (that way you know you have enough bodies. And this shouldn't be painful, a set of limits, I mean who can handle being in a boring meeting over 20 minutes? So 20 minute breaks. Or something.)

And as far as the OP-SCAN's go. I don't really CARE if precincts use them, just don't use them for a legally binding count. Use them for a backup, use them to publish the data to the web I don't really give a crap. Just not the actual count.

And one last thing, As we saw form the CA-50, candidates can be whisked away on a private jet and sworn in. This is crap. This CAN NOT be allowed, and if it is allowed, then a SPECIAL case of MANDITORY 100% HAND RECOUNT of PAPER and REMOVAL FROM OFFICE if necessary.

Where is the COMMON SENSE!?

We are not enemies here. I hope we agree on that.
Or else I am gone man, and this country which I swore an oath to, is no longer my country, It's an ELECTRONIC DICTATORSHIP!

“...the ballot images --- which were scanned at the precinct --- would be posted online for the public to inspect on the Internet. They could count them themselves as they wish, and they could be compared to the actual paper ballots at any time.

"It's actually an extremely transparent scheme, since no public records requests or access would be required to check the official count against those posted ballot images. In theory, anyway.”

I'm not sure we've got this fully covered...

This seems to say that the ballots as posted on the Internet are the same as the ballots cast by the voters. But this still looks indefensible to me. What am I missing?

Who would write the software that converts paper ballots to internet images? And how could it be reviewed by anyone else? To make it public would be to invite the attention of evildoers. Would we once more be faced with a situation where only highly-skilled specialists - not citizens of different backgrounds and skills - could study the stuff? That’s not transparency.

Internet transmission is an even scarier proposition. Internet transactions can be subverted - have been subverted. Even the strong cryptographic security touted on every Internet merchant’s home page - almost all of which is based on Rivest’s work - isn’t enough. Evildoers can penetrate it before transmission, or in transit.

And, compared to the conversion process, cryptographic security is even more formidable. There is even less rationale for subjecting it to scrutiny by citizens. Not only would it give evildoers a chance to study it; it will be really complex. Who but a very few would even be able to read such stuff, let alone understand it?

And this simply is the opposite of transparency, isn’t it?

I'm also wondering who would sit down to scan hundreds of images...

I understand that one could go from an Internet image back to a paper ballot to confirm the process. But what clue would suggest doing that? Doesn't seem sensible to do a random audit on an audit [:-) ??]

Btw, I think Lehto has raised important questions about the legal validity of ‘ballots’ and the practical consequences of instituting processes which can’t be invoked until after the results of an election have been posted.

Two more points.

1. As some have suggested above, imho the jurors’ system model could work to assemble citizens for hand counts.

2. Hand count works - for recounts, or for machine-free elections. We had the mother of all hand counts in the last election for governor here in Washington State. The election was conducted with hand-marked paper ballots and opscan machines. [primarily; a small fraction was on DREs.] State-wide, Gregoire won by about 130 votes after a hand recount of more than 2.8 million ballots. It was finally and fully confirmed by the courts.

Here is how it looked in King County, in which Seattle is located.

We had 594,000 absentees’ ballots and 305,000 polling place ballots, about 900,000 total here.

—Begin clips

My team of three sorted and counted 5,544 votes during a nine-hour shift. We agreed unanimously - the Republican, the Democrat and I, the county worker - about who should get every one of those votes.

Each ballot was counted by the Republican appointee: McClellan, 21, a recent University of Washington grad who applied to be the Rossi family nanny and got this job because her brother-in-law works for the campaign.

Then the same stacks were counted by the Democratic appointee: John Reese, 53, a Seattle pro-Palestinian activist who said he was "way left of liberal; I guess I'd call myself a radical."

They kept their counts secret and gave them to me. If the numbers matched, we reported the results and resealed the box. If they differed, we started over. If the second counts still didn't agree, we were instructed to return the box to be given to a new team.

The system of checks and double-checks didn't stop there. If our tallies for a precinct varied by even one vote from the machine recount, another team would later reopen the box and count the entire precinct by hand again.

...With all the recent news about uncounted votes and ballots being found in the side pockets of precinct machines, I expected a slipshod operation. I was completely wrong.

I am now convinced that in the counting of votes, humans are unquestionably superior to machines.

..."I'm so impressed with this system," McClellan said. "It's near impossible to corrupt, and it seems much more sensitive than a machine count. All the criticisms I hear about what we're doing are wrong."

Reese agreed. "I don't have much faith in the American political system, but I have faith in what we're doing here," he said. "I would put people counting over machine counting any time."

...those critics who are blasting the manual recount on the face of it don't know what they're talking about. Such as former Gov. Dan Evans: "Can you imagine 300 newly hired, ill-trained, overworked people counting by hand with people looking over their shoulders and getting accurate counts? It's ludicrous."

IMHO Badger is on the right path. Some will remember that Kuchinich and others proposed last year that the presidential election be conducted entirely with hand-counted paper ballots..

And holding elections on two or more days is another way to cope with long ballots...Also, in some jurisdictions - I think in Massachusetts? - citizens elect the chair of a board or government entity but don't vote on candidates for all the seats. The chair appoints the members. If members misbehave the citizens elect a new chair next time..

There are indeed many other problems - like getting changes through legislatures - but if a real effort was made solutions could appear...

Of course it can be done. Of course we can do it. Hand-counted paper ballots have less than a 1% error rate. All other systems, including DREs, opscans, mechanical levers, etc., have more than a 5% error rate. You can't tell me that a candidate won by a margin of 3% in an election where votes were counted on machines known to have a 5% (opscans) or 10% (mechanical) error rate, and expect me to believe it. Unless the margin of error is smaller than the margin of victory, there is no basis to trust an election.

In the case of Gregoire, the winning margin appeared to be less than 1%, so the only way it could be known for certain was to have exactly the 100% hand-count that was done, with complete transparency, full citizen oversight, and total checks and balances.

What do we know about voting machines so far? We know that they are not transparent, are easily hacked, and often cannot be audited or can only be audited when it is too late for the audit to be useful. So we're supposed to spend a few billion on some new digital opscan machines? If the billionaires in Congress want those machines that badly, let them pay for them out of their own pockets instead of buying them with our hard-earned tax money. We'll pay for pencils, we'll pay for paper, and we'll pay attractive salaries to pollworkers, but we're not buying any more machines.

According to our favorite Los Angeles-based investigative reporter, our very own Brad Friedman, the laboratories that test the machines aren't accredited, and they never tested for security anyway. So anyone who tries to accredit those machines is a crook. They do not meet the security standards for use in elections. They are easily opened, easily hacked, and because of the needs of elections officials, there is no proper chain of custody--most hacking would be done by the insiders anyway, the computer officials and the vendors' technicians, and they have all the access to the machines that they want--only the public does not.

Brad doesn't want hand-counted paper ballots, so he says that Harri never mentioned them. Had Brad asked about them, the subject would have come up, so it is obvious that Brad never brought it up. If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers.

There are many methods for dealing with the multitude of choices on our ballots. We can hold separate elections. We can print separate ballots for each race and each issue. Or we can use ballots designed to be quickly and easily read by people. The problems in Florida 2000 which provided the excuse for HAVA, like the butterfly-ballots and the hanging chads were due to the fact that the ballots were designed to be read by machines, not by people. The answer isn't more machines, the answer is We the People. If We the People want our votes to count, We the People have to count them. It's called democracy, remember?

The corporatocracy that first sells and then rigs the voting machines should not be running this country--it had its chance and it ran it right into the ground. Where have our jobs gone? Why do we have the biggest national debt in history? And for all the trillions that have gone to the defense-industrial complex, they not only can't win a war against people with a fraction of their budget, weaponry, and troops, they can't even provide proper health care for our wounded vets. Is that how patriots support the troops?

I remember reading about some guy who went to vote and every time he selected his candidate, the machine lit up the other candidate's name. He got so mad he smashed the machine in frustration. While I certainly wouldn't do anything like that, and I wouldn't even dare to advise anyone else to destroy property, I will say that I empathized with him and applauded what he had done. If we had more citizens like him, I think this country would be in a lot better shape. I think the guy was arrested, but I can't understand why. We paid for the machines, so don't we own them? If my toaster or my TV doesn't work, I have the right to trash them--why can't I do the same with my voting machine?

Geez, enough of this nonsense. When is a vote not a vote? Only real votes for real contests? What's not important? County Clerk? No? Superintendent of Public Education? The people who pick out the text books? No? They get the "other vote"? What kind of laws are you going to write to separate one "vote" from another? How about an entire political party setting tax rates and selective collections? That's been done before. Ask a black man in Mississippi which contest is important.

From the Press-Enterprise
"Paper has its own flaws. Paper has problems. But we are better prepared to deal with those problems..."

"I actually trust the machines. I love them. It's the people who give instructions to machines I don't trust," Hursti said.

He predicted it will be three to five years before manufacturers come up with a machine in which efforts to steal votes would be detected more easily than in existing systems."

So, no computers for awhile, four elections in 12 months in CA starting in November and the Secretary of State ready to ban computers for ballot design and counting.
The average age of the pollworkers hover near 65.

OH...and by the way, the Sentinel was talking about the actual hand counted audits done and the two separate recounts done by Santa Cruz County in the open with observers and matched the electronic totals 100%.

I may be a shill/troll, but at least I don't need to spin a story to match a predeteremined notion. Maybe sticking to the facts is scary enough. It seems any and all editorials or statements expressing support of elections officials are poison to Mr. Friedman.

Who would write the software that converts paper ballots to internet images? And how could it be reviewed by anyone else? To make it public would be to invite the attention of evildoers. Would we once more be faced with a situation where only highly-skilled specialists - not citizens of different backgrounds and skills - could study the stuff? That’s not transparency.

The software the converts paper ballots to images already exists in the digital image op-scanners themselves. Uploading them from the county headquarters to their Internet server for public viewing is rather rudimentary.

I guess I miss the section where any of that requires experts or attracts evil doers, but I'm happy to have it explained to me if you wish to.

Internet transmission is an even scarier proposition. Internet transactions can be subverted - have been subverted.

Remember, you're not talking about sending results via the Internet (which is insane, but done all the time right now). The tabulation process is completely contained and separate from this scheme, as I understand it. The posting of those images to the net is simply a check and balance. Akin to a public records request you might make to go down and examine the ballots. But in this case, the entire world gets to examine them for any anomolies and for accuracy, etc. via the net if they wish.

And, compared to the conversion process, cryptographic security is even more formidable. There is even less rationale for subjecting it to scrutiny by citizens.

The cryptocrap bullshit being forwarded by Rivest and others is exactly that, garbage. Even stipulating that it's the most secure thing in the world (not a safe stipulation, but just for arguments sake), there is even less transparency in it than the current DRE crap available today. It's insane. But the power PFAW folks are pushing it on Congress, and Congress is buying into it.

Your time spent complaining about that would be better spent picking up the phone and bitching to every Congress member you can about it!

Brad doesn't want hand-counted paper ballots, so he says that Harri never mentioned them. Had Brad asked about them, the subject would have come up, so it is obvious that Brad never brought it up. If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers.

It's a crazy thing, Mark, but since I was there with Hursti for about 6 hours --- and as far as I noticed, you weren't --- I actually know what I brought up and what I didn't. And, as mentioned in the article above, one of those things was hand-counted paper ballots.

Did I ask him about Nancy Tobi's suggestion that a single race be hand counted at each precinct as Paul Lehto has raised? And charged me with somehow not telling folks about? No. Because I knew nothing about the suggestion, otherwise, I'd have been more than happy to both get Hursti's opinion on it and report it to you.

Your charge that "Brad doesn't want hand-counted paper ballots" is as foolish and unsupported as your assertion about what I did and didn't ask Harri about.

If you haven't noticed, I've been fighting to get rid of DREs, so folks like yourself can actually have paper ballots to count by hand in the first place if you can get your local jurisdictions to agree to it!

Seriously...If some of the most ardent all-HCPB people were as smart about figuring out who their allies are --- and what is needed to accomplish the ends they hope for --- as they are about what they feel is needed for a legitimate democracy, then the battle for all HCPB would likely be a helluva lot farther along than it currently is.

If you haven't figured that out by now (as Mark's note would indicate) then perhaps my assessment of how smart you are about what a legit democracy requires has been premature.

Well, I am amazed at all the hoopla that has arisen in the last 24 hours. I've been out of pocket, and just now have a chance to make a few comments.

#1 Harri and I spent several hours talking about a variety of things on Thursday night prior to the Blue Ribbon Elections Review Committee (ERC) meeting on Friday morning (3/30). The discussion of the random selection of one race (contest) to be 100% hand-counted at each precinct (since it would be a random drawing at EACH precinct, the contest to be hand-counted would vary from precinct to precinct) prior to release of results was brief. We did not have an in-depth discussion of exactly how it would work, nor was it the primary focus of our conversations. He agreed that it sounded like a good concept, but I would have to say he was certainly not pronouncing it to be the "end all and be all" solution to anything.

This was a brief "concept" discussion. I am not surprised it did not come up in his subsequent discussions with Brad the next night, because it was one of many, many things discussed. Not to say it is not very important as one element of an overall approach, just to say it wasn't the highlight of everything.

#2 Personnel for 100% HCPB - I have a LOT to learn about this and freely admit it. I have spoken with Nancy Tobi at length, on more than one occasion about this. She may well be one of the most experienced and knowledgeable folks on this topic in the U.S. What I concluded from her is that it takes a lot of people to do it right and do it efficiently (so results are not unduly delayed). I also learned that in NH they have an abundance of folks willing to participate in this process, partly due to having done it for so long, and partly due to her and others' efforts to establish this over a period of many years.

In Riverside County, while not impossible to pull off, it would take a HUGE recruiting effort to do 100% HCPB counts in all 605 precincts. Could we do it? Yes. Could we do it for the November 2008 election - yes, if there was a monumental recruiting effort, training program, and cooperation and agreement by the county ROV. Realisticlly I don't see that happening in the next 19 months here in RivCo.

#3 Absentee voter (AV) ballot issues - as I stated previously, this is a HUGE issue and I do not feel equipped to deal with it meaningfully on the spot. Harri and I discussed the fact that he sees this as the weakest link in the chain (of custody) of our voting system, and I agree completely. It wasn't such a big deal when 10% voted via AV ballots. Now, with nearly 50% or more voting that way in some elections in RivCo, it is a HUGE issue.

I think Art Cassel's embryonic introduction of a possible approach is a good starting point. We need to have a separate thread to discuss AV issues. Right now the USPS is doing everything they can to assist in getting last-minute mailed ballots delivered - in our case - to the precincts and the central count building - by making special deliveries on Election Day. I am impressed at their going out of their way to work with the RoV to get the ballots delivered in time to ensure they qualify to be counted.

But that doesn't deal with the issues of chain of custody, and again, this whole topic needs a separate thread. The bulk of what we have been discussing has been precinct-based voting and counting. Please don't conclude from this that I am giving short-shrift to AV ballot issues - I am not.

#4 Statistical validity of pulling one contest at a precinct and doing a 100% hand count on that contest before releasing any results. It appears that I may have misunderstood the statistical validity or lack thereof of such a method. I have taken a couple of statistical classes many many years ago in college, but have long since forgotten a lot more than I remember. My purpose in suggesting this method was to get some dialog going (which it CERTAINLY did) with the goal of getting agreement on what we could do to check on the accuracy of the scanner count IF we put scanners (ONLY digital image optical scan or DIOS-type) in the precincts. I leave to the experts to come up with a "proper" validation method that is not so labor-intensive that it can't be done by a reasonable amount of people in a reasonable amount of time AT the precincts (remember space can be an issue too - some precincts are pretty darned small).

I would like to appeal to the EI community to remain focused on the goal - legal, accurate, verifiable and transparent elections that voters can have confidence in. We should not be taking pot-shots at each other, or implying nefarious motives. That kind of interaction will cause us to self-destruct and we can ill afford that.

Let's keep our dialog civil and issue-focused. We have a very short time to achieve some very laudable goals.

More people needed for hand counts? That's great! The more people will participate! I think that's bogus, saying there's not enough people for a hand count. Make it a civic duty, like jury duty. You don't think counting the votes is that important?

Those who say, "We don't have enough time", or "There's not enough people to count"...I think that's a bunch of baloney!!! At least, give me a GOOD excuse! I don't buy THOSE excuses!

"In Riverside County, while not impossible to pull off, it would take a HUGE recruiting effort to do 100% HCPB counts in all 605 precincts. Could we do it? Yes. Could we do it for the November 2008 election - yes, if there was a monumental recruiting effort, training program, and cooperation and agreement by the county ROV. Realisticlly I don't see that happening in the next 19 months here in RivCo."

Or here in San Diego, or in many other places. And time keeps on slip-sliding away.

What is in our favor is that the machines currently in use are not certifiable. (The people who bought them may be certifiable, in the sense of certifiably insane, but that's another story.) So really, if we can simply resist buying the new DIOS machines, we'd have the billions that would be spent for them to spend on recruiting and training pollworkers to do handcounts.

As for the mail-ins, we really do need another thread on that one. Here's George Galloway:

Brad, I'm not claiming to be very smart. I'm not a techie and I'm not in love with machines. What I do have is some experience in the arena and the lessons that taught me are ones of common sense:

1. Once there is a secret vote count, it is almost impossible for citizens to change the result of an election by simply (ha!) proving fraud.

2. Some elections officials and courts, like Ken Blackwell, Katherine Harris, and the Supreme Court in Florida 2000, don't care about how the people vote and will do whatever they can to thwart the will of the people and install their own favorites.

3. Any elections process that is not fully transparent and overseen by citizens, is an opportunity for fraud that will be taken advantage of by crooks.

4. If we want honest elections, we have to stop thinking in terms of what is practical, acceptable to politicians, or convenient, and start thinking in terms of what is right. Sometimes doing the right thing is impractical, unacceptable, and inconvenient. So what? Does that mean we should do the wrong thing or do nothing at all?

The two major parties have a stranglehold on elections in this country. The Republicans, I believe, are evil. They favor war crimes and torture. The Democrats, in my opinion, are less evil, as they don't favor war crimes and torture, they just want the war crimes and torture to continue so that they can use the issue to persuade people to give them money and vote for them in '08.

HCPB alone won't solve anything. We need to impeach Bush & Cheney, remove the Supreme Court majority in Bush v. Gore for bad behavior, abolish the electoral college, undo Tom Delay-style redistricting, get publicly-funded elections so that people who aren't millionaires can have ballot access, restore the Fairness Doctrine so that all candidates can get media coverage, institute ranked-choice voting, change the rules so that we can have proportional representation, enforce the Voting Rights Act so that we can stop illegal disenfranchisement, remove corporations from involvement in politics, and much, much more before we would have anything that could call itself a democracy without causing the world to snicker.

I heard Brian Willson speak the other night. He's the guy who lay down on the railroad tracks to try to stop an illegal shipment of arms to the Contras and lost both his legs when the train deliberately ran him over. He's a very inspiring speaker, but even more inspiring than his words was the fact that he wore shorts so that everyone could see his prostheses. That makes a statement. It says if you know something is wrong and you want to stop it, you can't just talk about it--you have to do something to try to stop it, even if it kills you. Not just write letters or carry protest signs, but lie down in front of the damned train. He never said that, but he didn't have to. What he did say was that he is a student of history and has learned that this country never was a democracy. So if we want it to be a democracy, we have to stop believing the myth that it already is.

A lot of people are concerned about global warming and pollution. But look around you and you'll see that given a choice between clean air and their cars, most people prefer their cars. Sure, they couldn't get to work without their cars, but do they really think that they and their kids can survive for long without clean air? Willson said that we're addicted to oil, addicted to war, and that addiction isn't something susceptible to reason.

Willson's talk gave me a lot to think about. Our lifestyle is dependent upon using much more of the world's resources than warranted, and we obtain those resources through military force. So I guess the millionaires in Congress keep voting for war crimes because there is no other way to maintain their lifestyles and the lifestyles of their constituents. It reminds me of some vegetarians who suggest that if we had to personally kill the animals we eat, we might think differently about it. If we had to personally kill the poor people in other countries who have to die so that we can maintain our extravagant lifestyle, would we think differently about it? Maybe we WANT rigged elections, so that we can say that it isn't our fault, it is the fault of unelected politicians. All I know for sure is that the train isn't going to stop, whether we lie down in front of it or not. And that if we want a better world, we have to do it anyway.

Your opinions and thoughts on all of the above are fine. Where I took exception to your comments was where you made a demonstrably incorrect and unsubstantiated assertion:

Brad doesn't want hand-counted paper ballots, so he says that Harri never mentioned them. Had Brad asked about them, the subject would have come up, so it is obvious that Brad never brought it up. If you don't ask the right questions, you don't get the right answers.

It was both out of line and completely untrue from top to bottom.

Beyond that, I'll respond only to this graf in your latest comment above:

4. If we want honest elections, we have to stop thinking in terms of what is practical, acceptable to politicians, or convenient, and start thinking in terms of what is right. Sometimes doing the right thing is impractical, unacceptable, and inconvenient. So what? Does that mean we should do the wrong thing or do nothing at all?

I appreciate your thinking, and all that you are doing to fight for your beliefs.

That said, I'd caution that "sometimes doing the right thing" comes in incremental steps. For example, if we fight to ban DREs, everyone can fight for hand-counted paper ballots if that's what they want at the polls all across the nation.

If you don't have paper ballots in the first place, you can't count them. Nothing in the Holt bill requires an optical-scan count (and if it did, I would fight equally hard against it). In fact, I was the one who made sure to add certain language about counting by hand to the bill, so it couldn't get shut out!

Simply because "the right thing", as you see it, is not available in one clean silver bullet, it does not make other efforts that move your towards that "right thing" into the "wrong thing".

And as I've said many times, if you stepped back, took a breath and looked at that, you might agree with me, and join the fight of the moment to hold back the deafening tide that is about to sweep DREs across the landscape unless we hold, at least, that part of it back.

That fight, clearly, is difficult enough for the moment, and could use your help and energy to support it, rather than cut the knees out from under it, and get the WORST of all worlds (which is where we're currently headed!)

From out here in Utah, what about Bruce Funk? Brad, please remember, when you talk about Harri Hursti, that it was Bruce, here in Emery County, who was the catalyst for Hursti's first major report, released May 11, 2006.
And Bruce Funk was run out of office for his diligence.

Remember this from my article in the June issue of Catalyst Magazine:

The time has come, Democracy said, to talk of many things:
Of Diebold, Funk, Ohio’s Ney,
Of Abramoff buying kings–
And why HAVA cannot matter–
Since the warnings that Hursti brings.

Okay, no more beating around the Bush – this week Utah’s Emery County Clerk, Bruce Funk, is redeemed.

Perhaps you’ve heard of him. His March 23rd announcement that he would not use the Diebold voting machines Lt. Governor Herbert sent him caused an emergency closed-door meeting on March 27th with Diebold, the Emery County Commissioners and Counsel, and Michael Cragun, Elections official from Lt. Governor Herbert’s office – but not Funk.

When the doors were finally opened, Funk was told to use the Diebold machines. Unwilling to accept responsibility for their security, he threw it back on the Commissioners, who later insisted that was his resignation.

This all happened after March 18, when www.blackboxvoting.com posted an initial independent evaluation of Diebold's TSx by Harri Hursti, Finnish computer security expert, and Security Innovation (consultant to Symantec, McAfee and Microsoft). The evaluation was based on their examination of two of Emery County's 40 machines, at Funk's request. The informal report noted clumsy outward problems, such as crooked, ill-fitting parts, then pointed out more suspicious differences in available memory. But it was the forewarning of three "critical security holes... not programming errors, but architectural design decisions" indicating that using the Diebold machines could be "potentially catastrophic" that undoubtedly raised Diebold's hackles.

Claiming that Funk had voided the warranty on the 40 machines by allowing independent parties to have access to them, Diebold slapped a $40,000 fine on Emery County.

Yet Cragun reported none of this on April 19 before the State Government Operations Interim Committee, where he updated the legislature about the voting machine implementation, with Bruce Funk seated nearby.

On May 11, the "Diebold TSx Evaluation, SECURITY ALERT" from Hursti/ Security Innovation was forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and Diebold, then released publicly online*, detailing "several back doors" into a three-layer software structure which can "conceal the contamination very effectively... to penetrate, modify and make everything look normal," overwriting "and therefore destructive for future forensic studies."

At the end of this momentous report, Harri Hursti respectfully acknowledges Bruce Funk: "The citizenry owes an immense debt of gratitude to Bruce Funk...".

Yet, Bruce's name has still not been publicly cleared here in Utah, and his forced retirement never reversed or recognized for what it was.

Bruce should not be forgotten, just because Utah's dominant culture is so beholden to authority figures. (Hell, Brigham Young University is actually having Dick Cheney speak at graduation - Yuk!)

Come on, Brad, Bruce's name belongs right up there with Ion Sanchez when it comes to Harri.

Beyond the above --- Hursti's appearance before the panel and the media deserves a great celebration - and love that picture of you two!

From out here in Utah, what about Bruce Funk? Brad, please remember, when you talk about Harri Hursti, that it was Bruce, here in Emery County, who was the catalyst for Hursti's first major report, released May 11, 2006. And Bruce Funk was run out of office for his diligence.

I never forget Bruce! The only reason he didn't come up in this article is due to the focus on Hursti being used by the Holt supporters to show how "op-scan is as bad as DRE, so we should allow them both".

For the record (and for what it's worth) the Emery County report came after the Leon County hack, even though you say above that it was "the first". Not that it makes much of a diff.

One point that does make a diff, however, is that you point to BlackBoxVoting.COM in your report, instead of BlackBoxVoting.ORG. Those are two different organizations and it was the .ORG that worked with Funk and Hursti in both Utah and Florida, not the .COM group.

As for "first", I was referring to the document, not the test. I well remember the December 13 2005 hack in Leon County, with the coincidentally simultaneous abrupt resignation of Diebold CEO/Chair Wally "Deliver-Ohio" O'Dell.

But that May 11, 2006 "Diebold TSx Evaluation / SECURITY ALERT" was, for me, the first/best/clearest document to share to prove the point, once and for all.

Anyway, Hursti's re-appearance, especially as you describe him, is extraordinarily exciting. What's the estimate on when your interview will be available?

The process: Voter votes by hand-marked ballot; ballot goes to opscan machine / central tabulator. Machines builds file of votes. Machines post the file on the Internet. So anyone interested can review all the votes. There is no identification of individual voters in the file.

The idea is that this constitutes “transparency.” It does, in one sense. Anyone can indeed review the posting. But this isn’t true transparency; or, if you like, it’s a form of transparency subject to subversion.

The software that processes the file and posts it on the Internet is part of the machines’ full software suites. [I didn’t know this; Brad pointed it out. I thought it would have to be created especially for this purpose.]

But machine software is not subject to review. And even if it were, it is unlikely that erroneous or subversive code could/would be discovered.

So it could have malicious components. Citizens have no oversight, have to trust makers or specialists. Not truly transparent.

The discussion of cryptography concerns the transmission of results from polling places to central tabulators. Brad: “...insane, but done all the time right now.” The transmission is vulnerable. So some will say: well, we’ll encrypt them.

By their nature crypto systems have the same drawbacks as machine code but more so. Another set of “trust me” systems, lacking in transparency.

I raised the point only as a warning. This will all get sorted out, no doubt, if the idea goes forward. But there are other systems with cryptographic components. No transparency. Pardon the paranoia but an evildoer might even advocate cryptosecurity with the idea of then twisting it to own purposes. And, finally, even robust cryptography can be penetrated with enough computer power.

“The cryptocrap bullshit being forwarded by Rivest and others is exactly that, garbage. Even stipulating that it's the most secure thing in the world (not a safe stipulation, but just for arguments sake), there is even less transparency in it than the current DRE crap available today. It's insane. But the power PFAW folks are pushing it on Congress, and Congress is buying into it.”

“The cryptocrap bullshit being forwarded by Rivest and others is exactly that, garbage.” I haven’t run across whatever Brad is referring to here. But I’m way ahead of Brad in my revulsion with cryptography in election systems. It is the height of opacity. And beyond question; any crypto system can be penetrated with enough power. I even pointed to this in my first post

Now it happens that Rivest has been working on election systems since about 1997 at least. He appeared before a House Committee on 5/24/01. Among the points he made:

“2) I believe that we should use the Internet to post:
a lists of registered voters
b list of actual voters
c list of actual ballots cast (not matched with voter's names, of course)”

“4) I believe voting systems should have a physical audit trail.
That audit trail should be directly created by the voter, or at least be directly verifiable by the voter when he casts his vote.
It need not be paper, but should be immutable and archival.”

Rivest may not be your favorite computer scientist but he is certainly one of the most respected in the game. [Btw he published a piece on audit design just recently that makes excellent sense.]

Which is not to say that he never made a mistake. Maybe Brad has spotted one. But Rivest does not write crap; if he’s wrong you’ll be able to see, quite clearly, where.